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Best 5-Year WAR by Non-HOF Pitchers

Posted by
John Autin

Since 1893, these are the non-Hall of Fame pitchers with at least 25.0 WAR in a 5-year span. Only those retired long enough to have appeared on a HOF ballot are listed. Limit one entry per pitcher. Baseball-Reference WAR formula is used.

The two best 5-year spans this century are 33.2 by Randy Johnson (2000-04, 3 CYAs) and 31.8 by Johan Santana (2004-08, 2 CYAs). Brown topped them both.

Roy Halladay's best 5-year WAR is 31.2. His 5 best individual seasons add up to 35.6 WAR.

Brown, with 211 wins, a .594 W% and 127 ERA+, got 2.1% of the HOF vote in his only ballot, and thus fell off the BBWAA ballot for good.

One more note on a Brown theme ... If you want to see some hard-luck W-L records, check out Ted Breitenstein with the 1890s St. Louis Browns. For 1893-97, he ranked 4th in WAR (behind 3 HOFers), but had a losing record. The Browns from 1893-96 had a .366 W%. He was lucky to escape to Cincinnati in 1897, when the Browns went 29-102.